America won’t set a withdrawal date from Central Asia bases, according to Radio Free Europe, quoting State Department spokesman Scott McCormack.
Could this issue evolve into a crisis?
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Laurence – author of 618 posts on Registan.net.
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One would assume that, as bilateral agreements usually have a clause allowing each party to withdraw, both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have the option to invoke this clause, as well as the United States. If they want US troops to go, they can legally (although there would no doubt be significant political ramifications) show them the door.
By the same token, the US can probably withdraw its forces at any stage, should it so desire.
Robert at Publius has another article about this and, as I noted there, if you look carefully at the wording of the SCO, they ironically are demanding that SCO members take action to boot out the Americans (although I’m sure that wasn’t the original intention of the statement’s drafters).